Haunted by the Living
by Mitslits
Summary: Max is used to being haunted by those he didn't save. He's not used to being haunted by those he did.


_The sun beats down on him as he sits beside his car, one leg stretched out in front of him, the other bent at the knee, his elbow resting on it. The wreckage of Furiosa's war rig lie scattered around him, the body of the War Boy six feet under. Light glints off a scrap of metal, shining right in his eyes and he squints, temporarily blinded._

 _When he opens them again, Splendid is standing in front of him, her stomach swollen with her unborn child. His brow furrows. She's dead. She has to be. She went under the wheels._

 _The girl opens her mouth. She freezes like that and he is about to speak when a slow line of red trickles out of the corner of her mouth, running over her lips. It slowly grows until there is a red waterfall, splashing onto her stomach and staining her skin red. The bullet wound he put in her leg runs red as well, a puddle of blood coloring the sand at her feet. "You did this, Max," she says, blood pouring forth with each word. "You killed me. Murderer. Murderer. Murderer."_

 _And suddenly there are two voices saying the word. He looks around, but there is no one else, only the desert and Splendid._

 _Her arm raises almost elegantly, one finger pointed towards him. "Murderer." As he watches, a slit appears in her stomach, fingers curling out of her flesh, forcing it apart. A face, a child's face, appears in the slit, dark hair soaked in blood. "Murderer," the child whispers._

Max jerks awake, the metal of the motorcycle he's propped up against warm from the sun. He scrubs a hand over his face in a vain attempt to shake off the nightmare, but it clings to his mind like polecats to their poles and he gives up on the prospect of more sleep. If he closes his eyes, he'll only see worse.

He drives in no particular direction, surrounded by the sand and the wind and the sun and the sky. Freedom from everything but his thoughts. His head is the perfect prison.

 _War Boys are everywhere, their hands reaching for Toast, the dark skinned girl clinging to him. Her mouth is open and he thinks she is screaming, but he can't tell. Pale hands grab her, slowly begin to pull her away from him. He holds her to him, her frightened brown eyes boring into his. The War Boys start to give up, releasing their grip on her._

 _Max lets her go and pushes her towards them. They swarm over her eagerly and now he knows she's screaming._

Most nights he just looks up at the stars. They don't offer much in the way of comfort. He thinks that maybe up there he'll find redemption. Now he just has to get there somehow.

 _Capable is on her knees before him, white hair framing her face._

 _He holds Nux against him, knife at his throat. The boy is limp in his arms, has stopped trying to resist. The prick of the knife grows stronger as Capable's pleading gets louder and louder._

 _"Let him go, just let him go. He hasn't done anything!"_

 _He draws the blade across Nux's throat, his blood spraying out._

 _Capable's hair turns red with it._

He refuses to return to the Citadel. Nightmares aren't anything new; he's handled them plenty of times before. It doesn't make much of a difference that the people he dreams about now are alive. It doesn't make any difference at all.

 _They drag her in and dump her at his feet, tears matting her hair to her face, clothes lying in pieces around her. Sobs wrack her frail shoulders as Cheedo slowly looks up at him, pleading eyes finding his._

 _"Please, take me back. I didn't mean to leave. They made me go. Please, please." She leans forward until her forehead is pressed against the floor, still sobbing._

 _Slowly, he gets up from his throne and walks toward her. His first kick thuds into her gut and she lets out a choking gasp, collapsing onto her side. His boot thuds into her face, turning her mouth into a broken, bloody mess. He doesn't stop until she's lying motionless. He's not interested in used property._

Sometimes he wonders what life would have been like if he stayed there. He never wonders for very long.

 _The Dag sits huddled next to him, hands fluttering as she prays to whoever it is she believes is listening. She repeats the phrases over and over, but nothing ever changes. Years pass and he watches her fade away to nothing, skin withering off her bones, hair littering the floor in clumps. Her eyes hang out of their sockets and he can hear the clack of bone with each movement she makes, the whispered words made harsh._

 _He turns to face here when she is nothing but bone, finally motionless, empty eye sockets gazing at nothing. Her finger bones still twitch as if she's trying to pray. "No one's listening," he tells her._

The days wear into weeks, wear into months, wear into a year. He curses the mind that keeps dragging up thoughts of the women he left behind. They'll survive. He's sure of it.

 _He stands in the corner, steel muzzle on his face, hands bound behind his back._

 _Furiosa lies beneath the Immortan, silent. She stares at the ceiling as he works over her._

 _Max tries to take a step forward, but something is holding him back. He can't see what._

 _At that, she looks over at him. "What are you waiting for?"_

 _The Immortan comes with her name on his lips._

He sits outside the walls of the Citadel, engine of his motorcycle idling. It would be so easy to drive in, see them again, so easy. It might even put a stop to his nightmares. He turns the bike and drives away.


End file.
